Category Archives: Artists

This has been the busiest summer of art modeling that I’ve had to date. It’s almost as if God or the spirits or the cosmic energies of counterbalance are aware of how much I desperately need this gratifying work to keep me from stumbling into the abyss of personal torments. I’m sorry if that sounds hyperbolic, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. From sculpture at the New York Academy of Art to joyous sessions at Minerva’s drawing studio, summer pre-college portfolio classes at FIT and Molloy College and ‘Figure al Fresco’ at Battery Park, I’ve been an artist’s model this summer far more than I’ve been a sunbather – and that’s saying a lot because I love sunbathing!

Amidst all this summer work the highlight, without a doubt, has been private modeling sessions with Steven Assael, the living master of representational art. Besides the great pleasure of getting to know him as a person, it’s absolutely mesmerizing to watch him work. The steadiness of his hand, the precision of his fingertips rubbing as he blends and shades, and the focus of his gaze, are in themselves a display of ‘art’ in a way. Creation in action, unfolding before your eyes. While posing for the drawing below I felt almost in a trance!

And these are some sketches of my short poses by Steve, in different tools and paper, from my very first session in his studio. Love these 🙂

And a quick note for my New Yorker readers; the exhibition “Armenia!” is opening at Metropolitan Museum next month on September 22nd. It sounds amazing. This Armenian girl is looking forward to it!

Hellooo friends! In the midst of a jam-packed art modeling schedule of late I’ve still managed to see the Michelangelo exhibition at the Met … twice! Eight years in the making, works loaned from 50 museums and private collections around the world, and it shows. And they let you take photos! Why does that excite me so much? Because I’m now the owner of a brand new iPhone 7 which has a superb camera. I’m gonna have fun with this device, and it’s good for Museworthy too. Better pics!

This piece was a real treat, and it exemplifies why artists love to look at drawings even more than paintings – observing a master’s hand at work as he explores ideas and formulates his vision. These are Michelangelo’s studies for the arm of God in the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. Interesting how he tested two different gestures. And since Michelangelo wasn’t wasteful and reused paper, we can see the faded centaur sketch in the background:

I posted those arms to Instagram. Yes I’m on Instagram now! You know, with all the cool kids 😉 I’m at artmodelnyc if any of you would like to follow me there.

Here’s another drawing that my art model readers will appreciate. The paper is in poor condition but the pose is intense. A male model (all of Michelangelo’s models were men) doing a deep torso twist, turned head and pivoted shoulders. Not easy! The model was most likely one of Michelangelo’s stone cutters or studio assistants:

I posted a figure painting to my Tumblr a couple of weeks ago that has received over 200 likes and reblogs. And we all know that accumulating “likes” on social media is the most sought-after form of validation in our culture, right? Do we even matter if we’re not getting “likes”? How are we to measure our popularity and worth if not by “likes”?? 😛 I’m kidding of course, but there was an eye-catching Impressionistic quality to the painting that appealed to many of my fellow Tumblrers.

By the way, does everyone know that I have a Tumblr? In case you don’t, it’s called meanderings and it’s a collection of images that I find interesting, fun, or intriguing. No commentary like here on Museworthy, just a potpourri of cool stuff. Art, photography, animals, etc. Feel free to check it out and assess my curatorial skills.

So the painting I posted was this nude by the 19th century Spanish artist Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench. In addition to the lovely swimming figure, the teal color is great.

Camarlench was born in Valencia in 1849. He grew up poor and worked in various jobs to help support the family. By the time he was 21 he was enrolled in art academies and on his way to a successful career as a painter, doing commissions, receiving awards, and teaching.

I looked at a lot of his work, and I especially like when he worked in a more painterly style with conspicuous brushstrokes. But he really mixed it up over the course of his life, shifting gears in both style and palette. His subjects range from portraits to landscapes to nudes, and many works of his children. I’ve selected a few to share here with my readers.

Clavariesas:

Nude:

Lovers:

The Procession in Godella:

Icarios’ Games:

Marisa, the artist’s granddaughter:

Mounted Guards:

Nude

And the man himself in a really cool self-portrait from 1895. I dig the hat 🙂

Companions. Loved ones. Models. Friends. Souls – human and animal – with faces and gazes, personalities and body language, stories and histories. Followers of this blog contributed works of art – in a most glorious array of expressions – to a little online art show themed “Portraits and Pets”. Some included brief descriptions to accompany their work, others let their art stand alone. Each one is thoroughly unique, and a gesture of participation in this blog’s congenial community. And your blog hostess was honored to participate right along with you. I now present …”Portraits and Pets”! Enjoy 🙂

Mark WummerFinding Flintwatercolor
“Flint is a fifty-five pound black lab that started his life training to be a service dog but decided on a career change, and instead became our son’s family pet. He can curl himself into a ball of black fur so tightly that it’s tough to know what part of him you are looking at.”
Reading, Pennsylvania

Two fromJudy WallerBest of Friendswatercolor on paper
“At home in the studio where she lives and works, her little parrot Beatrix can almost always be seen sitting contentedly on Lita’s shoulder. Lita starts every day by holding Beatrix in her palm and stroking her feathers, much to the little bird’s obvious delight. They truly are ‘Best of Friends!'”
Roseburg, Oregon

Siesta
watercolor on paper
“My painting of Mike and his dog Sophie captures the tender affection between the two, in a peaceful moment of repose. Mike has a natural affinity for animals, and can befriend even the most reluctant dog or cat almost instantly.”

Elaine HajianPatriarch
pastel
“My grandfather who came to America to escape the Armenian Genocide. Honoring a gentle man who will live forever in our hearts.”
New York City

A dear friend of mine – someone very special to me – had a birthday this weekend. So I emailed him an artwork that I knew would make him smile. It did 🙂 Then, while modeling today, it occurred to me that it might make a fun Museworthy Halloween post.

“I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself. Well, I didn’t want to do myself in a self-portrait, but I love pumpkins. It’s the sinisterness, the Halloween I’ve always loved. It’s a little bit edgy. So I did it and of course they were furious and rejected it.”

Pumpkinhead, 1972:

That Jamie Wyeth submitted this odd, quirky pumpkinhead as his ‘self-portrait’ membership requirement to a panel of stuffy academicians might be my new favorite art anecdote. A scion of a family of great artists, who have been unfairly dismissed by the fine art establishment as mere “illustrators”, submits an offbeat work instead of something safe and traditional. Gotta love it. Team Wyeth all the way!

Happy Halloween everyone! I’ll see you all very soon with cool stuff, photos, updates, drawings and dispatches from the modeling platform. Peace, friends.

She has been called “the Indian Frida Kahlo”. To a fellow 20th century female painter with the same fearless and rebellious spirit as the Mexican icon, the moniker is no doubt a great compliment. Though her life and career were brief, Amrita Sher-Gil defied conventional norms and left a legacy as India’s most celebrated woman artist of the modern era.

She came into the world blessed with privileged circumstances, and was reared with an Indo-European cultural identity that would shape her sensibilities as she matured. Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Budapest in 1913 to highly accomplished and well-connected parents. Her father was a Sikh aristocrat and scholar, and her mother was a Hungarian opera singer. Both of them encouraged and supported their daughter’s art education and training. The family moved to Shimla in northern India when Amrita was a child and she began creating her first artworks at the age of five. By the time she was in her teens Amrita, accompanied by her mother, was studying sculpture in Italy and, later, painting in France at the esteemed Ecole des Beaux Arts.

With the requisite formal academic training under her belt, Amrita was ready to discover her authentic voice. I find it fascinating how a young woman in the 1920s and 30s, whose experiences overlapped between the European west, British Raj, and traditional India, manages to find a sense of cultural belonging. Amrita’s fiercely independent spirit and fervent curiosity surely helped her navigate the unique cultural patchwork in which she found herself. In photos of Amrita taken during various stages of her life, she appears in some of them wearing traditional Indian dress, and in others wearing bathing suits and fashionable western clothing.

During her years in Paris, Amrita drew profound inspiration from the works of Cezanne, and post-Impressionists like Gauguin and van Gogh. Gauguin, with his subjects of native people and village life, and use of bold lines and rich palettes, became a particularly strong influence and is evident in many of Sher-Gil’s paintings.

Hungarian Gypsy Girl, 1932:

One of Amrita’s most well-known works, this is Three Girls, 1935. It was her first painting upon returning to India from Europe. She wrote, “I realized my real artistic mission, to interpret the life of Indians and particularly the poor Indians pictorially; to paint those silent images of infinite submission and patience,… to reproduce on canvas the impression those sad eyes created on me.”

Painting of Sumair, Amrita’s cousin, 1936:

A lovely photo of a smiling Amrita with three of her paintings:

In 1938, against her parents’ wishes, Amrita married her first cousin on the Hungarian side of her family, Victor Egan, and returned to India for good. Amrita realized that she was destined to paint in India and India alone, never having felt completely comfortable, artistically, in Europe. As she put it, “There [Europe] I was not natural and honest because I was born with a certain thirst for colour and in Europe the colours are pale – everything is pale.” The couple first settled in Uttar Pradesh, where Amrita immersed herself in painting themes of rural Indian life and the struggling poor, particularly the women and children, whom she portrayed with solemn empathy.

Hill Women:

Part of Sher-Gil’s “South Indian Trilogy”, this is Bride’s Toilet, 1937:

In 1941, Amrita and Victor moved to Lahore (present day Pakistan). Then, tragically, Amrita fell ill and slipped into a coma in December of that year. The cause of death is not known, although it’s been speculated to have been possibly food poisoning, peritonitis, or a botched abortion. She was only 28 years old. A woman of liberated modern mind who chose to remain artistically faithful to her indigenous roots. Frida Kahlo approves.

Regular museum visitors know the rules when it comes to photography. At most New York museums, photography (with no flash) is allowed in all the galleries which house works of the permanent collection. Special exhibitions, however, prohibit photography of any kind. Try to take a quick pic on your iPhone and you can expect one of the guards to admonish you. “Sorry ma’am, no photography”. You will then be handcuffed and escorted to an interrogation room <– just kidding 😉 So imagine my delight when I was told that photography WAS allowed at the recent “Picasso Sculpture” show at MoMA. Yay! The show ended its five month run on February 7th, and I saw it in its final few days, which is how I see most of the big acclaimed art shows in town – when the end date is looming! I’m very glad I didn’t miss this one.

Picasso had formal training in painting and drawing only. So his approach to sculpture was motivated by experimental impulses, ingenuity, and his fertile creative mind, all of which were abundantly on display in this exhibit. What we witnessed, from gallery to gallery, was a man engaged in self-taught exploration, working in three-dimensions, letting his imagination run free, salvaging metal and wood scraps, found objects, paper and paint, cardboard, string, nails, plants, plaster, bronze, and anything he could get his hands on. In a wide array of subject matter – women, animals, children, instruments, etc. -Picasso’s sculptural expressions alternate from childlike to muscular, classical to avant-garde, spontaneous to engineered. He worked big, he worked small, and continued to experiment with sculpture for decades – a perpetual student – up to the mid-1960s. It was a truly fun and fascinating show.

This is just a sampling of the works, and among the ones I’ve chosen to post there is surely something for everyone here. I took all the photos in this post, so feel free to download, keep, and share!

Picasso did six versions of this, Glass of Absinthe, in painted bronze with an actual absinthe spoon. He made the sugar cube also from a piece of bronze. A very popular alcoholic spirit in Picasso’s day, absinthe was prepared by pouring it over a sugar cube and then diluting with water: